Thursday, January 13, 2011

February 2011 Visa Bulletin was released on 12th January 2011. As predicted there was no major movement for employment based category. EB-2 China progressed by 8 days into July 2006. EB-2 India is still standstill. Major movement for the EB-2 employment based category for India and China will be seen in month of June-July 2011, only when unused visa numbers will be available due to spillover from EB2- ROW and EB-1 . Until then one should expect small or no movement in EB-2 category. Eb-3 movement was observed for India and China. This will still progress at snail pace for rest of the year. Family Based category will see retrogression for rest of the year.

Family Based :

As per February Visa Bulletin, family categories had seen as much of the advancement of the last two years has been reversed with major retrogression.

RETROGRESSION OF FAMILY CUT-OFF DATES

Continued heavy applicant demand for numbers in the Family Fourth preference category has required the retrogression of the Worldwide, China-mainland born, Dominican Republic, and India cut-off date for the month of February.

It has also been necessary to retrogress the Dominican Republic F2B category for the month of February.

Further retrogressions cannot be ruled out should demand continue at the current levels for some categories and countries.

Please Note: Applicants entitled to immigrant status become documentarily qualified at their own initiative and convenience. By no means has every applicant with a priority date earlier than a prevailing cut-off date been processed for final visa action. On the contrary, visa allotments are made only on the basis of the total applicants reported documentarily qualified each month, compared with the amount of available numbers. For example, during the past month, over 17,300 of the applicants who have become documentarily qualified in the Family preference categories have priority dates earlier than the cut-off dates established for January. Demand for visa numbers can fluctuate from one month to another, with the inevitable impact on cut-off dates.

Employment Based :

Employment 1st - still current in all categories.

Employment 2nd - weak movement for India and China; just a one week improvement for China (01 Jul 2006) and stalled again for India (8 May 2006).

Employment 3rd - modest movement; 8 days advance for most countries to 01 April 2005; two week advance for China to 01 Jan 2004; India moves up two week to 22 February 2002. Mexico jumps 2 months to 08 July 2003 and the Philippines jumps by 8 days to 01 April 2005.

Employment 3rd Other Workers – most countries moved by one week at 01 May 2003; India moves up 22 February 2002; Mexico jumps to 01 May 2003.